him-he used to come in all the time."
"But why was John Ballato in the
movie 'Reds'?" Miller asked.
Vitolo shrugged and said, "He was in
the movie 'Reds' because he was a little co-
munista. He used to wear the big boots.
Boots!"
11illernoddedsagcl
"How do you know he was in the
movie 'Reds'?" Vitolo asked.
"Because I've seen it thirty-seven
times," Miller said. "Can I get the Chicken
E ill . '>"
m o.
"Of course," Vitolo said, approvingly.
"So what is it about, the movie 'Reds'?"
" I ' 1 "
t s a ove story.
"Ah!" With a gesture of admiration,
the proprietor backed into the kitchen.
After a moment, Miller remarked, "I
have a fantasy of getting whacked in this
restaurant. I'm surrounded by four or five
friends, drinking a glass of wine, and I
hear a ruckus, and therè d be just enough
time to register a person's face-it's not
clear, maybe someone like Emilio, but
dispassionate-before the first of five bul-
lets bursts into me." He cleared a spot for
his Chicken Emilio. "Three to the heart,
two to the head."
Miller's films are marked by disaffec-
tion; they avoid homilies or uplift in favor
of a kind of sparkling glumness. After
Aaron Sorkin, one of"Moneyball"'s two
credited screenwriters, saw a preview of
the work, he sent the director an e-mail:
"I mean this in the best possible way-it's
a fifty-million -dollar indie film." Miller
explained, "Aaron does have more of a
populist sense. What he writes is meant to
go one hundred miles per hour and be fast
and fun and bright and loud-and this
film definitely benefits from his genius
writing, but it also operates at a slower,
more observational frequency." He added,
"To me, downers are uppers. They're ex-
hilarating because they orient you." Miller
saw "Moneyball" as a search-for-wisdom
story. "It begins with Billy"-the Oakland
Its general manager Billy Beane, played
by Brad Pitt-"realizing that he's not
where hè s supposed to be, that hè s dis-
placed somehow."
Does that ring any bells?
"Yeah, always. I could see walking away
from all this at some point. If I had a dozen
lives, one of them would involve really get-
ting off the rails in India, heavy into med-
itation. Probably I'd have another life as a
musician-these past couple of years I've
24 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 24, 2011
taken up piano. And I could be a soldier."
He paraphrased a line from Milan Kun-
dera about there being "some comfort in
the notion of being stuck in a totalitarian
organization. I even fantasize about being
locked up in solitary confinement." Miller
sipped a cup of tea, mentally framing that
scenario. "It's possible," he acknowledged,
"that about three hours into my twenty-
year sentence 1'd begin to feel some regret
for whatever crime 1'd committed."
- Tad Friend
DEPT. OF HOOPLA
MEALS ON WHEELS
.
l
P eople remember the Tunisian fruit
and vegetable vender whose self-
immolation started the riots that toppled
the government of Tunisia and set off
region-wide uprisings. His name was Mo-
hamed Bouazizi. Stateside, he inspired a
new category, Most Heroic Vender, in the
Vendy Awards, which recognize the best
street-food venders in New York. Street-
food venders' working lives take place at
the grass roots; you can't get any more
local. ''Where are you tomorrow? Where
will you be next week?" their devotees ask.
Customers keep track of their favorite food
carts online and follow them from place to
place, because the venders have to move all
the time. They contend daily with police,
regulations, and fines for offenses like hav-
ing their vending licenses in their pockets
and not out on display. Most of the citjs
street-food venders are recent immigrants.
The pressures that overwhelmed Mo-
hamed Bouazizi were worse than in New
York, but similar in kind.
This year, the Vendy Awards cook-off
took place on Governors Island, on a
green in front of the row of former officers'
houses known as Colonel's Row. The
ferry ride over requires no time at all; a
catapult could almost fling you there.
Along two sides of the green, rows of food
trucks attracted lines of al-fresco diners
who, as they waited, ate what they had got
from the previous truck. Almost every-
body was young. Many of the young guys
wore plaid shirts not tucked in and Ber-
muda shorts or skinny jeans. Many of the
young women's dresses employed hori-
wntal blue-and-white stripes. The diners
said things like ".. .literally a puff fritter of
cheese on top of a burger and it is so
f " d " all th d . ' hill . d '
GOOD. an ... ey 0 IS C -an,
like chill dogs and chill cheese fries, and I
was FLOORED!" and 'Where in Brook-
lyn? My Brooklyn or your Brooklyn?" At
the center of the green, a band called City
Billies played bluegrass-reggae. Its singer,
Sashàmani François, swayed through the
Stanley Brothers' "Think of What You've
Done" like an Ozark Mountain Bob
Marley. Over his braids he wore a red-
black-and-yellow dread cap he had cro-
cheted himsel[
Nearby, a historic marker explained
that Coloners Row dated from the late
nineteenth century, when the Army was
not a popular career choice. To attract and
keep good officers, the Army offered
them extra-nice houses. Occupants en-
joyed twelve thousand five hundred
square feet of living space (although prob-
ably not Korean barbecue featuring kim-
chi, on the menu ofKorilla BB{1. winner
of the 2011 Vendy Award for Rookie of
the Year). The houses provided servants'
quarters for, maybe, private cooks (who
did not, as far as is known, include in their
repertoires Al Pastor tacos, an all-natural
Mexican-style taco and the signature dish
of the Taco Truck, winner of the Best of
New Jersey Vendy). At the end of full-
dress banquets, officers on Governors Is-
land were probably not offered T aiwanese-
inspired desserts (like green -tea -and-
mango-flavored shaved ice, as served
by Wooly's Ice, often parked in front of
79 Elizabeth Street downtown, winner of
the Vendy for Dessert); nor did they ever,
probably, no matter how many perks they
were afforded, get a chance to eat pupu-
sas, El Salvadoran hand-shaped corn pat-
ties with various fillings (the specialty of
Reina Bermudez-Soler and her husband,
Rafael Soler, of Solber Pupusas, winners
of the all-around Vendy Cup).
Attendees sampled the different food
trucks and submitted ballots for the Peo-
plè s Choice Award, but the official judges
had the final say. These were food experts,
and open-category boldface names like
Gayle King, editor-at-large of 0, The
Oprah Magazine. While tasting, the
judges sat at a horseshoe-shaped table and
questioned the cooks, who came by in
ones and twos. Afterward, when the win-
ners were announced, people cheered like
mad or became downcast. A dessert vender